The Department of Justice indicted two Canadian nationals, with one already in the U.S. to face charges, for allegedly running a hacking campaign in 2016 that targeted educational institutions in multiple states. Ryan James Roach, 35, and Mathiew James Stubbings, 41, are accused of hacking into computers, stealing login credentials and using compromised devices to mine cryptocurrency. Stubbings and Roach started the campaign in June 2016 and continued until December 2019. Roach was arrested and extradited from Canada last week. He appeared in a Rochester, New York, federal court on Tuesday. The Justice Department said it is still trying to secure Stubbings’ extradition in Canadian court. Both men are facing a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on charges of conspiracy to obtain information from a protected computer and to cause damage to a protected computer, obtaining information from a protected computer, and intentional damage to a protected computer. The two were able to conduct the attacks by using virtual private servers in several European countries, according to prosecutors. They hacked into educational institutions in New York, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Massachusetts before installing cryptomining software on computers. Prosecutors said they targeted “educational institutions in the United States that had supercomputers and researched security vulnerabilities in the victim computer networks, using a variety of methods to gain access, including using a server and compromised computers from another victim to conceal their identities.” At their peak, the men had 10 computers running cryptomining software, according to indictments. The Justice Department has increased the tempo of arrests and indictments of cybercriminals as nations have grown more willing to extradite those accused of cybercrimes. Last week, two well-known Ghanaian cybercriminals pleaded guilty to charges related to their management of an international criminal organization that stole more than $100 million from victims via romance scams and business email compromises. The two were part of a group extradited from Ghana last year after nearly a decade of cyberattacks on U.S. businesses.
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